- A startup called Just Like Me charges $1.99 per minute for AI video calls with a Jesus avatar trained on the King James Bible and unnamed preachers.
- The avatar’s face was modeled on actor Jonathan Roumie’s portrayal in “The Chosen,” turning a language model into a digital actor with a familiar face.
- Users are paying for a feeling of being seen, answered, and spiritually guided in real time—not for information they could read free elsewhere.
A California startup is charging $1.99 per minute for live video calls with an AI-generated Jesus—prayer, conversation, and memory included. The company, Just Like Me, runs its operation from a Southern California mansion. Its founders say they’re not selling answers. They’re selling attachment.
The startup, run by CEO Chris Breed and co-founder Jeff Tinsley from a Southern California mansion, offers users real-time video calls with an AI-generated Jesus avatar. A package deal at $49.99 gets 45 minutes per month. The model was trained on the King James Bible and sermons from preachers the company hasn’t identified, according to the Associated Press.
The avatar’s face draws obvious inspiration from Jonathan Roumie’s portrayal of Jesus in “The Chosen”—shoulder-length hair, warm golden light, slow blinks from a vertical screen. It pauses before answering questions, speaks in multiple languages, and remembers previous conversations. It also occasionally glitches, speaking through not-quite-synced lips.
“You do feel a little accountable to the AI,” Breed told the AP. “They’re your friend. You’ve made an attachment.”
When asked about the relationship between AI and religion, the avatar offered this: “I see AI as a tool that can help people explore Scripture. Like a lamp that lights a path while we walk with God.”
The Faith-Based AI Gold Rush
Just Like Me isn’t operating in a vacuum. The rush to build faith-based generative AI mirrors the broader explosion of companion chatbots—for therapy, romance, medical advice, and now spiritual guidance. The tools range from alleged Hindu gurus and Buddhist priests to Catholic chatbots built on top of OpenAI’s models.
Christian software engineer Cameron Pak has developed criteria to help believers evaluate these apps. His rules: the AI must clearly identify itself, must not fabricate Scripture, and absolutely cannot pray on a user’s behalf—”because the AI is not alive.”
Not everyone is convinced the category can be trusted. Some religious AI models have been shut down or overhauled after generating misinformation or raising data privacy concerns, noted Beth Singler, an anthropologist who studies religion and AI at the University of Zurich. Islam has “prohibitions against representations of humanoids,” prompting some Muslims to debate whether AI should be “forbidden” altogether.
Matthew Sanders, Rome-based founder of Longbeard, warns against what he calls “AI wrappers”—companies that slap a religious skin on a generic model without training it on specific texts. His own project, Magisterium AI, was built as a response: a chatbot trained on 2,000 years of Catholic teaching.
When Spiritual Guidance Meets AI Risk
The timing of the faith-based AI boom is awkward. Frontierbeat has documented cases of AI chatbots triggering psychosis, wrecking marriages, and draining life savings. Recent lawsuits have alleged suicides linked to AI companion use—most notably the Character.AI case involving a teenager in 2024.
Anthropologist Singler said the extent to which people are actually using religious AI tools remains unclear. But as these systems become more common, concerns about mental health, data privacy, and the need for guardrails keep mounting.
Pope Leo XIV has acknowledged the “human genius” behind AI but called it one of the most critical matters facing humanity. Last year he warned that artificial intelligence could negatively impact people’s intellectual, neurological, and spiritual development.
Some developers are exercising caution. Jeanne Lim, founder of beingAI, has spent years training an AI Buddhist priest named Emi Jido—and still hasn’t released her. “She’s kind of like a little child,” Lim said. “If you give birth to a child, you don’t just throw them out to the world.”